Sonny Hostin and the Ugly Truth about Slavery

That Sonny Hostin would feel shock upon learning her ancestors likely were slavers is natural. But it should also come as little surprise.

Earlier this year, Sunny Hostin talked on The View about a “tough conversation” she had with her mother after participating in Finding Your Roots, a a PBS series hosted by Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Gates told Hostin that her maternal ancestors had "likely" owned slaves and that her third great-grandfather was "the son of a merchant who was likely involved in the slave trade."

"It was deeply disappointing," Hostin admitted.

That Hostin would feel shocked by such a revelation is natural. But it should also come as little surprise.

“Everyone is descended from both slaves and slave-owners,” Elon Musk observed on X. “It was an extremely common practice from the dawn of civilization.”

Musk is overstating the matter a bit, but he’s not wrong that slavery was ubiquitous for most of human history.

“Slaves—people defined as property, forced to work, stripped of their rights, and socially ‘dead,’ could be found in every significant realm of the age,” wrote British historian Dan Jones in Powers and Thrones. “In China, the Qin, Han, and Xin dynasties enforced various forms of slavery; so too did ancient rulers of Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and India.”

Still, my friend and longtime colleague Lawrence Reed is right when he warned against using this fact to minimize or understate the sin of slavery in American history.

“The fact that slavery was so commonplace throughout the world does not whitewash the slavery that was perpetrated by anybody, including Americans,” Reed wrote in 2023.

On the other hand, it’s important for people to understand that slavery was not a “uniquely American characteristic,” Larry noted. Nor was it brought to the Americas by Europeans.

In his book Slavery: A World History, Milton Meltzer points out that slavery was common on the North and South American continents before the arrival of Europeans.

“The Aztecs…made certain crimes punishable by enslavement. An offender against the state—a traitor, say—was auctioned off into slavery, with the proceeds going into the state treasury…Among the Mayans, a man could sell himself or his children into slavery…The comparatively rich Nootkas of Cape Flattery (in what is now northwestern Washington state) were notorious promoters of slaving. They spurred Vancouver tribes to attack one another so that they could buy the survivors.”

Some people likely know these facts; others may not. But one of the things I enjoy about history is that the more one learns, the less certain one tends to be come about the things we know (or think we know).

And while it’s easy for us to judge our ancestors for any crimes (moral or legal) they may have committed, I often remind myself that our children, grandchildren, and future descendants will one day judge us; and we may bear more warts than we realize.